


How You Get the Girl (Steve Rogers x Reader)

by Steggy



Series: Tumblr Prompts [11]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, How You Get the Girl, Taylor Swift - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-15
Updated: 2016-05-15
Packaged: 2018-06-08 16:59:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6864886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Steggy/pseuds/Steggy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been six months, and it's all been in grief, wondering, hoping. He left. Then he shows up on your doorstep in the pouring rain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How You Get the Girl (Steve Rogers x Reader)

**Author's Note:**

> Based on Taylor Swift's _How You Get the Girl_.  
>  bother me on twitter @alyjevans or on tumblr @spangledcap & @poorcap

“Are you _insane_?” Your hands are tugging a soaking wet Steve Rogers into your house before you can even register what you’re doing, what invitation you’re dealing out.

Steve grunts in pain, but doesn’t resist as you practically throw him inside and slam the door shut behind you, keeping the raging hurricane out. The storm had already knocked out the power, tore up some trees. Now it had dragged a lost puppy back to your doorstep in the middle of the night, its poor, pathetic knock raising you from the comfort of your blanket nest in the living room.

He’s cut and bruised, bleeding through his uniform, and the pouring rain outside has only made the blood run, dripping down his skin. But worst of all, you notice, he’s shaking, despite it being the dead of summer. You wonder for a moment if he walked all the way here from wherever his fight was. If he stood there for a while, being pelted by the rain, too afraid to knock on the door until the chill of the water started to bite at his bones.

You completely ignore the fact that you haven’t heard from him in six months.

He doesn’t have time to open his mouth. You’re forcing him into the bathroom, shoving despite his injuries, demanding he take off his clothes and then pushing him onto the closed toilet seat as you uncover the first aid kit. Then you’re avoiding staring at his bare form, his smooth, muscular silhouette for too long in the candlelight, afraid, as he might’ve been to knock, of falling too easily back into his hands.

“[Y/N]...” Steve starts as your delicate fingers pour alcohol into a cotton pad.

“Shh.” Normally, with a cut as deep as the one you press the alcohol into just below his collarbone, there would have been cries of pain. But all Steve does is bite into his lower lip and watch your hands, refusing to be weak in front of you. Not again.

“[Y/N], I didn’t come here just so you’d patch me up.”

Your hands pause for a moment on his chest, palm flush to his damp, warm skin. But you don’t look up. You don’t revisit the past six months without those icy blue eyes, the ones that burn into you now. You can’t. You can only focus on your task at hand, though the skip in your heart is difficult to rationalize.

Steve groans. He, of all people, knows exactly when you’ve decided to be stubborn. But it isn’t going to stop him. “Look, [Y/N], I came here because I was too afraid to tell you what I wanted back then. And I left instead. Because I thought…”

If you were going to do this, here, now, you weren’t going to let it be easy. Scoffing, you reach for the needle and thread, turning your attention away from him. “Thought what, Steve? That you were protecting me?”

His lips press into a thin line, and you catch his gaze for a fleeting moment when you turn back around. “Maybe it was that. Or that’s what I told myself, at least.” He winces as you start on his stitches. It’s hard being that close to him, able to smell him, feel the heat radiating off of his body. It would be so easy to just turn your head, for your lips to find that chiseled jaw…

You shake your head, sighing. Steve opens his mouth to continue but fails to find the right words, even if he’d practiced it a million times over in his head before he even thought about coming here. And he knows he won’t win. He won’t get through to you like this.  As you patch him up, flush out his wounds, stitch Captain America back together, it’s silent except for a few hisses of pain here and there from Steve as the alcohol bubbles and burns away the dirt and grime smeared into the blood. It isn’t until you’re searching for clothes for him to wear that either of you speak again.

“Here,” You murmur, tossing a white t-shirt you’d stashed in your bottom drawer at a hesitant Steve lingering in your bedroom doorway.

He catches it, and as he uncrumples it, a quiet chuckle spills out of his lips. “Hey, this is mine.”

“Yeah, uh, sorry about the wine stain on the front,” You say as you awkwardly scratch the back of your head.

That chuckle returns. He shakes his head, holding the shirt up towards you with a small nod of gratitude. “It’s fine. I’m glad you found use of it.”

You resist the blood that threatens to rise in your cheeks, nodding, and turn away from him and back to the drawers to search for the pair of pajama pants he’d left, too. The memory of late night, lonely wine binges after he left resurfaces in your mind despite trying to keep it down.  “Yeah, good use.”

Behind you, Steve pulls the shirt on and proceeds to lean against the threshold, just silently watching, waiting for you to make the next move. And that next move is simply tossing his pants at him.

“Thanks.”

“I’ll be in the living room. Feel free to wash up, help yourself to something to eat, I don’t really, uh, care. Just…” You shift uncomfortably. “Yeah. Careful of the stitches, and all.”

“Right.”

 

* * *

 

 

As you listen to the sounds of Steve tinkering around in the kitchen, you dismantle the blanket fort, pulling the softest blankets onto the couch with you and curling into the cushions. It’s hard not to slip into thoughts of the past. Remembering sleepless nights, wondering, hoping he was okay. Watching the news, watching an entire city nearly fall out of the sky, wondering, hoping he was okay. Drowning yourself in wine and ice cream when he left without a word six months ago, wondering, hoping you would be okay.

When Steve makes it into the living room, your eyes spot not one, but two coffee mugs in his hands, and you want to refuse, but decide to swallow it down and graciously take one when he offers it. He grabs his own blanket, strewing it across his lap, and cautiously takes a seat across from you. It’s silent for a moment as you blow on the hot coffee, taking small sips.

Steve speaks first, “I’m sorry, [Y/N]. I know you must hate me.”

A sigh passes your lips as you rest your mug against your knee. “I don’t hate you, Steve. You know that. Or you should.” His blue eyes bore into you, and you know if you stare long enough, you’d be a puddle in seconds. Clearing your throat, you stare down into your coffee, hoping to break the beginnings of the spell.

“I… I know,” He sighs. His attention seems to break because for a moment, the tension eases when he gives a small laugh. You look up, just in time to see him grasping at a picture frame of the two of you, your lips pressed to his cheek, a warm grin delighting his face. It stings worse than a thousand bees.

“I can’t believe you still have this. Remember that day? Just a few days after New York, somehow you’d… Managed to get me smilin’ again,” Steve murmurs fondly, and you can’t help but give a small smile of your own, very vividly recalling that day, too, nodding in response.

Then the tone of his voice shifts, and his eyes fixate on the photo, his smile turning sad. “I must’ve lost my mind when I left you all alone, without ever saying why.”

And you thought the picture hurt.

You inhale sharply, then hold your breath, trying to distract yourself from the stabs into your heart. Trying to distract how the knife seems to twist when his eyes raise to meet yours again.

“Why did you leave?” Your voice raises just above a whisper.

Steve sets his mug on the coffee table, and before you realize it, he’s moving yours, too, and he’s shifting closer.

“I was afraid that…” He shakes his head. “I was afraid of falling more in love with you than I already was. I was afraid that’d mean I’d lose you that much quicker. I don’t exactly have the best track record with women, y’know.”

For the first time, you actually laugh. “Yeah, yeah, I know.”

He mirrors your smile, relief flooding through him at just the sight of that smile that’s haunted his dreams for months. And then he just jumps. He won’t be a coward anymore.

His hand cups your cheek, and you freeze, your entire body alighting with fire as he slowly draws in, pressing his forehead to your own. “I’ll wait for as long as you want me to, I know I broke your heart, I know… [Y/N], I want you for worse or for better, and I’m incredibly sorry I couldn’t say that sooner.”

Everything stops. The world, time. Your heart. You stare into those eyes, remember feelings of love, of happiness, of a life you never wanted to let go. You see yourself in those eyes, see a future, seeing its difficulties but seeing its rewards.

And then your lips are molding to his.

Steve jumps a bit in surprise, expecting you to have been a bit more stubborn than that, but then he’s kissing you back with every ounce of passion he has burning through him. Both hands come to hold your face, and your hands press to his chest, grasping the wine stained shirt, pulling him closer.

By the time you pull away, you’re both breathless. Steve looks at you through his lashes, his lips curling up slightly at the corners, and his hands fall gently to your waist. You mimic him, one hand moving to curl against his cheek, and you feel him lean into your touch.

Then, before you kiss him, you whisper, “I don’t want you to go.”

And as his breath fans over your lips, inches from brushing yours, he whispers back. “Never again.”

And that’s how he got the girl.


End file.
